Tarkovsky Quotes

A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.

Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.

Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?

Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.

I know only one thing. when i sleep, i know no fear, no, trouble no bliss. blessing on him who invented sleep. the common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. there is only one bad thing about sound sleep. they say it closely resembles death.

The film [Stalker] needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.

I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically.

Let everything that's been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.

Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.

I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.

What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.

...what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing.

Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored.

We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it.

Upon seeing Utah for the first time, Tarkovsky remarked that now he knew Americans were vulgar because they filmed westerns in a place that should only serve as backdrop to films about God.

If you look for a meaning, you’ll miss everything that happens.

Late this evening I looked at the sky and saw the stars. I felt as if it was the first time I had ever looked at them. I was stunned. The stars made an extraordinary impression on me

...art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition - otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be changed in accordance with the ideals it expresses. Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good. It’s ridiculous to imagine that people can be taught to be good…Art can only give food – a jolt – the occasion – for psychical experience.

In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers, acquiring material weight, only in its recollection.

Man is born unto the trouble as the sparks fly upwards.' In other words suffering is germane to our existence; indeed, how without it, should we be able to 'fly upwards

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.

Tarkovsky was right. The responsibility of the artist is to stir people’s hearts and minds toward loving others: to find the light and the true beauty of human nature within this love. Religion can rarely show us what fate means in concrete terms. Yet everyone needs to be understood and this understanding is found within each individual’s fate, one’s life journey that clarifies the way. I’m not a therapist or a philosopher or a priest. I’m an artist.

A poet is someone who can use a single image to send a universal message.

Substitution . . . the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image.

Perhaps cinema is the most personal art, the most intimate. In cinema only the author's intimate truth will be convincing enough for the audience to accept.

My encounter with another world and another culture and the beginnings of an attachment to them had set up an irritation, barely perceptible but incurable-rather like unrequited love, like a symptom of the hopelessness of trying to grasp what is boundless, or unite what cannot be joined; a reminder of how finite, how curtailed, our experience on earth must be

When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction (...) no effort on their part. What can it mean to them when they have not shared with the author the misery and joy of bringing an image into being?

Why do I feel this alone? Basically, because I’ve always been alone. I’ve always been alone. And alone I’ll be. It’s about time I become aware of it and never forget it.

If a writer, despite his natural gifts, gives up writing because no one will publish him, then he is no writer. The artist is distinguished by his urge to create, which by very definition is a concomitant of talent.

What moved me was the theme of the harmony which is born only of sacrifice, the twofold experience of love. It's not a question of mutual love: what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment, it is nothing.

Being silent for a while is good. Words can’t really express a person’s emotions.

The director’s task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable. Of course an artist can lose his way, but even his mistakes are interesting provided they are sincere. For they represent the reality of his inner life, of the peregrinations and struggle into which the external world has thrown him.

The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, 'I don't like it!', 'It's boring!' It is not a point that one can argue; but it like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.

My objective is to create my own world and these images which we create mean nothing more than the images which they are. We have forgotten how to relate emotionally to art: we treat it like editors, searching in it for that which the artist has supposedly hidden. It is actually much simpler than that, otherwise art would have no meaning. You have to be a child—incidentally children understand my pictures very well, and I haven’t met a serious critic who could stand knee-high to those children. We think that art demands special knowledge; we demand some higher meaning from an author, but the work must act directly on our hearts or it has no meaning at all.

There are people who want to know about everything in the minutest detail, like accountants or lawyers. But show a toe sticking out of a hole in a sock to a poet and it is enough to produce an image of the whole world in him.

Modern mass culture, aimed at the "consumer", the civilization of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being

All that I wanted was to tempt into life things that wanted to come out of me.

Why are they all trying to make me into a saint? Oh God! Oh God! I want to do things. Stop turning me into a saint.

If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.' At first there can be a friction between our expectations of time and Tarkovsky-time and this friction is increasing in the twenty-first century as we move further and further away from Tarkovsky-time towards moron-time in which nothing can last—and no one can concentrate on anything—for longer than about two seconds.

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

I think a person needs to learn from childhood to find himself alone. It means to not be bored when you’re by yourself, because a person who finds himself bored when alone – as it seems to me – is in danger.

One doesn't need a lot to be able to live. The great thing is to be free in your work. Ofcourse it's important to print or exhibit, but if that's not possible you are still left with the most important thing of all -- being able to work without asking anybody's permission.

И птицам с нами было по дороге, И рыбы подымались по реке, И небо развернулось пред глазами... Когда судьба по следу шла за нами, Как сумасшедший с бритвою в руке.

For many years I have been tormented by the certainty that the most extraordinary discoveries await us in the sphere of time . We know less about time than about anything else

He, who doesn't know why he lives, cannot feel love for people or for life itself. I don't love myself enough, so I don't love people enough. One of my major defects is impatience: I try to get rid of it, but i can't. I am not tolerant enough for my age. I suffer for this, because i can't approach people with sympathy. They annoy me.

It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life.

I felt all the time that for the film to be a success the texture of the scenery and the landscapes must fill me with definite memories and poetic associations

Art is a meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others. Again, this has not to do with practical advantage but with realising the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice: the very antithesis of pragmatism. I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work only for the sake of 'self-expression.' Self-expression if meaningless unless it meets with a response. For the sake of creating a spiritual bond with others it can only be an agonising process, one that involves no practical gain: ultimately it is an act of sacrifice. But surely it cannot be worth the effort merely for the sake of hearing one's own echo?

My aim is to place cinema among the other art forms. To put it on a par with music, poetry, prose, etc.

An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind.

I love your eyes, my darling friend, Their play so passionate and bright'ning, When a sudden stare up you send, And like a heaven-blown lightning, It'd take in all from end to end But there's more that I admire: Your eyes when they're downcast In bursts of love-inspired fire And through the eyelash goes fast A somber, dull call of desire..

I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is too busy chasing after phantoms and bowing down to idols. In the end, everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him.

A child doesn't have to be a prodigy. The only thing that matters is that he should't become 'stuck' in childishness

Happy is not the right word. This world is not a place where we can be happy. It wasn’t created for man’s happiness, though many believe this is the reason of our existence. I think we are here to fight, so that good and evil can clash within us, and good may prevail, thus enriching us spiritually. It’s difficult to say whether we are happy or not: it doesn’t depend on us… There are times when one regrets being born, but life also gives us surprising things that, alone, are worth living. The issue of happiness doesn’t exist for me: happiness as such doesn’t exist.

Of course life has no point. If it had, man would not be free, he'd become a slave to that point and his life would be governed by completely new criteria: the criteria of slavery. Like an animal, the point of whose life is that life itself, the continuation of the species. An animal carries out its slavish activities because it can feel the point of its life instinctively. Therefore its sphere is restricted. Man, on the other hand, claims to aspire to the absolute.

Art is by nature aristocratic, and naturally selective in its effect on the audience. For even in its 'collective' manifestations, like theatre or cinema, its effect is bound up with the intimate emotions of each person who comes into contact with a work. The more the individual is traumatised and gripped by these emotions, the more significant a place will the work have in his experience. The aristocratic nature of art, however does not in any way absolve the artist of his responsibility to his public and even, if you like, more broadly, to people in general. On the contrary, because of his special awareness of his time and of the world in which he lives, the artist becomes the voice of those who cannot formulate or express their view of reality. In that sense the artist is indeed vox populi. That is why he is called to serve his own talent, which means serving his people.

The artist has a duty to be calm. He has no right to show his emotion, his involvement, to go pouring it all out at the audience. Any excitement over a subject must be sublimated into an Olympian calm of form. That is the only way in which an artist can tell of the things that excite him.

Cinema is a very difficult and serious art, it requires sacrificing of yourself. You should belong to it, it shouldn't belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa.

The aim of art is to prepare a person for death

Όλα τα δάκρυα είναι εγωιστικά. Είναι η πραγματική ενσάρκωση του εγωισμού.

No other art can compare with cinema in the force, precision, and starkness with which it conveys awareness of facts and aesthetic structures existing and changing within time.

What will our children be like ? A lot depends on us. But it's up to them as well. What must be alive in them is a striving for freedom. That depends on us. People who have been born into slavery find it hard to lose the habit.

Art affirms all that is best in man—hope, faith, love, beauty, prayer…What he dreams of and what he hopes for…What is art?…Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. Touched by a masterpiece, a person begins to hear in himself that same call of truth which prompted the artist to his creative act. When a link is established between the work and its beholder, the latter experiences a sublime, purging trauma. Within that aura which unites masterpieces and audience, the best sides of our souls are made known, and we long for them to be freed. In those moments we recognize and discover ourselves, the unfathomable depths of our own potential, and the furthest reaches of our emotions.

When I speak of the aspiration towards the beautiful, of the ideal as the ultimate aim of art, which grows from a yearning for that ideal, I am not for a moment suggesting that art should shun the 'dirt' of the world. On the contrary! the artistic image is always a metonym, where one thing is substituted for another, the smaller for the greater. To tell of what is living, the artist uses something dead; to speak of the infinite, he shows the finite. Substitution... the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image.

το αν θα τα καταφέρουμε ή όχι εξαρτάται από τον δικό μας αυτοσεβασμό και από την ικανότητά μας να ξεχωρίζουμε ανάμεσα σε αυτό που έχει σημασία και στο απλώς εφήμερο.

I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.

Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the vincula that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count.

A film in cinema is what in theatre would be realism—and vice versa. In cinema—as in life—the text, the words, are refracted in everything apart from the words themselves. The words mean nothing— words are water.

I am becoming more and more convinced that there is something wrong with the way I live. Something false about everything I do. Even when I want to do something good; I feel that it's only in order to seem a better person.

Si alguien intenta llegar a ser director de cine, está arriesgando su vida entera, y él es el único responsable de ese riesgo

Masterpieces, not always distinguished or distinguishable among all the works with pretensions to genius, are scattered about the world like warning notices in a mine field.

I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is too busy chasing after phantoms and bowing down to idols. In the end, everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him.

Little plots and stories, acted out and screened, can't possibly be called cinema. They have nothing whatever to do with cinema. A cinematographic work is above all a work which would not be possible in any other art form. In other words. it can be created by means of cinema, and cinema alone

Our fraught way of life gives each of us a narrowly defined role, creating conditions conducive to developing only those elements in our psyche which allow us to grow within the confines of that role. The other areas of our psyche waste away. Hence lack of contact. Here psychological and social factors combine, and produce fear, distrust, moral baseness and the death of hope.

We all either underestimate each other, or else exaggerate each other’s virtues. Very few people are capable of assessing others as they deserve. It is a particular gift. In fact I would even say that only the great are capable of it.

In the case of someone who is spiritual receptive, it is possible to talk of an analogy between the impact made by a work of art and that of a purely religious experience. Arts acts above all on the soul shaping its spiritual structure.

In the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker, just before making a fateful decision, one character says to another, “There must be a principle: never do anything that can’t be undone.” That principle is why, on the brink of a big decision, the first thing to fill my mind is doubt. What separates the strong from the weak, I reminded myself as I wandered sticker-shocked through the streets of Basseterre, is the ability to act instead of spending most of life paralyzed, too scared to make a choice that might be wrong.

But how can I put a name to what it is that I want? How am I to know that I really don't want what I want, or that I really don't want what I don't want? These are intangibles that the moment you name them their meaning evaporates like jellyfish in the sun.

Hemos llegado a una situación en la que el público prefiere cualquier basura comercial a Fresas salvajes de Bergman o a El eclipse de Antonioni

One woman sent me on a letter written to her by her daughter, and the young girl's words are a remarkable statement about artistic creation as an infinitely versatile and subtle form of communication: '...How many words does a person know?' she asks her mother. 'How many does he use in his everyday vocabulary? One hundred, two, three? We wrap our feelings up in words, try to express in words sorrow and joy and any sort of emotion, the very things that can't in fact be expressed. Romeo uttered beautiful words to Juliet, vivid, expressive words, but they surely didn't say even half of what made his heart feel as if it was ready to jump out of his chest, and stopped him breathing, and made Juliet forget everything except her love? There's another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion—these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door.. The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real... And this doesn't happen through little Audrey, it's Tarkovsky himself addressing the audience directly, as they sit on the other side of the screen. There's no death, there is immortality. Time is one and undivided, as it says in one of the poems. "At the table are great-grandfathers and grandchildren.." Actually Mum, I've taken the film entirely from an emotional angle, but I'm sure there could be a different way of looking at it. What about you? Do write and tell me please..

Off course, life has no point. If it had, man would not be free. He'd become a slave to that point and his life would be governed by completely new criteria: the criteria of slavery. Like an animal, the point of whose life is that life itself, the continuation of the species. An animal carries out his slavish activities because it can feel the point of its life instinctively. Therefore its sphere is restricted. Man, on the other hand claims to aspire to the absolute.

An artistic image is one that ensures its own development, its historical viability. An image is a grain, a self-evolving retroactive organism. It is a symbol of actual life, as opposed to life itself. Life contains death. An image of life, by contrast, excludes it, or else sees in it a unique potential for the affirmation of life. Whatever it expresses—even destruction and ruin—the artistic image is by definition an embodiment of hope, it is inspired by faith. Artistic creation is by definition a denial of death. Therefore it is optimistic, even if in an ultimate sense the artist is tragic. And so there can never be optimistic artists and pessimistic artists. There can only be talent and mediocrity.

في طفولتي اقترحت أمي أن أقرأ " الحرب والسلام" للمرة الأولى، ولسنوات طويلة بعد ذلك كانت أمي غالبا ما تستشهد بمقاطع من الرواية ملفتة نظري الى دقة وبراعة تولستوي في كتابة النص الأدبي، وبالتالي صارت رواية " الحرب والسلام" بالنسبة لي مثل مدرسة للفن، ومعيارا للذوق والعمق الفني. . . بعدها لم يعد ممكنا أن أقرأ أي عمل تافه لأنه سوف يولّد لديّ إحساساً حاداً بالنفور.

I have always been interested in a person’s inner world. I am interested in man, for he contains a universe within himself; and in order to find expression for the idea, for the meaning of human life, there is no need to spread behind it, as it were, a canvas crowded with happenings. I wanted Nostalgia to be free of anything irrelevant or incidental that would stand in the way of my principal objective: the portrayal of someone in a state of profound alienation from the world and himself, unable to find a balance between reality and the harmony for which he longs, in a state of nostalgia provoked not only by his remoteness from home but also by a global yearning for the wholeness of existence. I wanted to pursue the theme of the “weak” man who is no fighter in terms of his outward attributes but whom I none the less see as a victor in this life.

Religion, philosophy, art — those three pillars on which the world has rested—were invented by man in order symbolically to encapsulate the idea of infinity, setting against it a symbol of its possible attainment (which in real terms is of-course impossible). Humanity has found nothing else on such an enormous scale. Admittedly man found it by instinct, without understanding why he needed God (easier that way!) or philosophy (explains everything, even the meaning of life!) or art (immortality).

There was a time when I thought that film, unlike other art forms (being the most democratic of them all) had a total effect, identical of every audience. That it was first and foremost a series of recorded images; that the images are photographic and unequivocal. That being so, because it appears unambiguous, it is going to be perceived in one and the same way by everyone who sees it. (Up to a certain point, obviously) But I was wrong. One has to work out a principle which allows for film to affect people individually. The 'total' image must become something private. (comparable with the images of literature, painting, poetry, music.) The basic principle- as it were, the mainspring- is, I think, that as little as possible has actually to be shown, and form that little the audience has to build up an idea of the rest, of the whole. In my view that has to be the basis for constructing the cinematographic image. And if one looks at it from the point of view of symbols, then the symbol in cinema is a symbol of nature, of reality. Off course, it isn't a question of details, but of what is hidden.

Man is made up of opposing characteristics. History demonstrates vividly the fact that it always moves in the worst possible direction. Either man is not capable of directing history, or else he does direct it, but only by pushing it down the most terrible, wrong path there is. There is not a single example to prove the opposite. People are not capable of governing others. They are only capable of destroying. And materialism—naked and cynical—is going to complete the destruction. Despite the fact that God lives in every soul, that every soul has the capacity to accumulate what is eternal and good, as a mass people can do nothing but destroy. For they have come together not in the name of an ideal, but simply for the sake of a material notion. Mankind has hurried to protect the body (perhaps on the strength of that natural and unconscious gesture which served as the beginning of what is called progress) and has given no thought to protecting the soul. The church (as opposed to religion) has not been able to do so. In the course of the history of civilization, the spiritual half of man has been separated further and further from the animal, the material, and now in an infinite expanse of darkness we can just make out, like the lights of a departing train, the other half of our being as it rushes away, irrevocably and for ever. Spirit and flesh, feeling and reason can never again be made one. It's too late. For the moment we are crippled by the appalling disease of spiritual deficiency; and the disease is fatal. Mankind has done everything possible to annihilate itself, starting with its own moral annihilation—physical death is merely the result. Everyone can be saved only if each saves himself.

-Μίλα! -Μίλα! Γιατί δε μιλάς; -Μίλα! Δε με νοιάζει τι θα πεις, μίλα! -Μίλα! Μίλα! Πες της...πες της...γιατί δεν της λες ότι κάθε στιγμή μαζί ήταν γιορτή. Επιφάνεια, οι δυο σας μόνοι μέσα στον κόσμο. Ότι ήταν πιο θαρραλέα, πιο αναλάφρη κι από πουλί, ότι κατέβηκε ορμητική δυο δυο τα σκαλιά σαν ίλιγγος και μέσα από την υγρή πασχαλιά σε οδήγησε στο βασίλειό της, στην άλλη πλευρά, πίσω από τον καθρέφτη. Πες της, γιατί δεν της λες, ότι όταν ήρθε η νύχτα, άνοιξαν διάπλατα οι πύλες της αγίας τράπεζας, ότι στο σκοτάδι έλαμψε η γύμνια σας, καθώς γείρατε. Ότι άνοιξες τα μάτια σου και την είδες στο πλάι σου και είπες...Πες της το. Αυτό πρέπει να της το πεις: ευλογήμενη να' σαι. Κι ότι ήξερες πως η ευλογία σου ήταν θράσος. Ότι κοιμόταν και το χέρι της ήταν ακόμα ζεστό κάτω από τα σκεπάσματα. Πες της για τα ηλεκτροφόρα σύρματα της κοιλιάς της, ότι βουνά πρόβαλλαν στην ομίχλη, θάλασσες λυσσομανούσαν, ενώ κοιμόταν ακόμα καθισμένη σε θρόνο κι ήταν, θέε μου, δική σου. Πες της, γιατί δεν της λες ότι όταν ξαπλώνατε μαζί, έσβησαν πόλεις χτισμένες ως εκ θαύματος. Πουλιά ταξίδευαν στον ίδιο δρόμο. Ότι ο ουρανός ξετυλιγόταν μπρος στα μάτια σας, ότι τα ψάρια στα ποτάμια κολυμπούσαν αντίδρομα. Πουλιά ταξίδευαν στο δρόμο μας

Η ζωή περικλείει και το θάνατο. Το ομοίωμα της ζωής τον αποκλείει ή τον αντιμετωπίζει ως τη μόνη δυνατότητα για την επικύρωσή της. Η ίδια η καλλιτεχνική εικόνα εκφράζει ελπίδα, πάθος, πίστη και διάφορα άλλα, μεταξύ των οποίων και το θάνατο του ανθρώπου. Η δημιουργικότητα είναι η άρνηση του θανάτου, άρα είναι αισιόδοξη, ακόμα κι όταν η ζωή του καλλιτέχνη είναι τραγική. Γι' αυτό δεν πρέπει να χωρίζουμε τους καλλιτέχνες σε αισιόδοξους και απαισιόδοξους. Σε γενικές γραμμές υπάρχουν μόνο χαρισματικοί και μη χαρισματικοί καλλιτέχνες.

Going through old papers I came across the transcript of a university debate on Rublyov. God, what a level. Abysmal, pathetic. But there is one remarkable contribution by a maths professor called Manin, Lenin Prize winner, who can hardly be more than thirty. I share his views. Not that one should say that about oneself. But it's exactly what I felt when I was making Andrey. And I'm grateful to Manin for that. "Almost every speaker has asked why they have to be made to suffer all through the three hours of the film. I'll try to reply to that question. It is because the twentieth century has seen the rise of a kind of emotional inflation. When we read in a newspaper that two million people have been butchered in Indonesia, it makes as much impression on us as an account of our hockey team winning a match. The same degree of impression! We fail to notice the monstrous discrpancy between these two events. The channels of our perception have been smoothed out to the point where we are no longer aware. However, I don't want to preach about this. It may be that without it life would be impossible. Only the point is that there are some artists who do make us feel the true measure of things. It is a burden which they carry throughout their lives, and we must be thankful to them.

If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met. This singularity is like the dominant note of every moment of existence; in each moment of life, the life principle itself is unique. The artist therefore tries to grasp that principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence. The quality of beauty is in the truth of life.

Q: What would you like to tell people? I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to be spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.

Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalized action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher, and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.

1 I don't believe in omens or fear Forebodings. I flee from neither slander Nor from poison. Death does not exist. Everyone's immortal. Everything is too. No point in fearing death at seventeen, Or seventy. There's only here and now, and light; Neither death, nor darkness, exists. We're all already on the seashore; I'm one of those who'll be hauling in the nets When a shoal of immortality swims by. 2 If you live in a house - the house will not fall. I'll summon any of the centuries, Then enter one and build a house in it. That's why your children and your wives Sit with me at one table, - The same for ancestor and grandson: The future is being accomplished now, If I raise my hand a little, All five beams of light will stay with you. Each day I used my collar bones For shoring up the past, as though with timber, I measured time with geodetic chains And marched across it, as though it were the Urals. 3 I tailored the age to fit me. We walked to the south, raising dust above the steppe; The tall weeds fumed; the grasshopper danced, Touching its antenna to the horse-shoes - and it prophesied, Threatening me with destruction, like a monk. I strapped my fate to the saddle; And even now, in these coming times, I stand up in the stirrups like a child. I'm satisfied with deathlessness, For my blood to flow from age to age. Yet for a corner whose warmth I could rely on I'd willingly have given all my life, Whenever her flying needle Tugged me, like a thread, around the globe.

La fórmula de "esto no lo entiende el pueblo" siempre me ha indignado profundamente. ¿Qué se quiere conseguir con ello? ¿Quién se toma el derecho de hablar en nombre del pueblo, de verse a sí mismo como la encarnación de la mayoría del pueblo? ¿Y quién sabe qué es lo que comprende el pueblo y qué deja de comprender, qué necesita y qué rechaza? ¿O es que alguien en alguna ocasión ha hecho si quiera una sencillísima pero honrada encuesta entre ese pueblo, para ilustrarse acerca de sus verdaderos intereses, reflexiones, deseos, esperanzas y decepciones? Yo mismo soy una parte de mi pueblo. Yo he vivido con él en mi patria y yo he tendido (de acuerdo con mi edad) las mismas experiencias históricas de ellos, yo he observado las mismas experiencias vitales que él y sobre ellos he reflexionado. Y también ahora, viviendo en el mundo occidental, sigo siendo hijo de mi pueblo. Soy una pequeña gota, una partícula diminuta de él, y espero que pueda expresar sus ideas, ideas profundamente ancladas en sus tradiciones culturales e históricas

النحت في الزمن. السينما؛ الإيقاع، وروح الإخراج، ودور "المونتاج" (1/2) --------------- أنا أرفض مبادئ "سينما المونتاج" لأنها لا تتيح للفيلم أن يستمر ويمتد وراء حدود الشاشة: إنها لا تتيح للجمهور أن يخلق ذلك الاتصال بين التجربة الشخصية وما يوجد أمامهم على الشاشة. "سينما المونتاج" تقدم إلى الجمهور أحاجي وألغازًا، تجعلهم يحاولون حل شفرة الرموز، ويجدون متعة في التعرف على المجازات والاستعارات، محتكمين طوال الوقت إلى تجربتهم العقلية، الفكرية. مع ذلك، فإن كل لغز من هذه الألغاز يتضمن الحل الصحيح والدقيق، بالتالي فأنا أشعر بأن ايزنشتاين يمنع الجمهور من السماح لمشاعرهم بأن تتأثر حسب تفاعلهم الخاص تجاه ما يشاهدونه. في فيلمه " أكتوبر"، عندما يجاور الآلة الموسيقية – البالالايكة – مع شخصية كيرينسكي، فإن منهجه يصبح هدفه، بالطريقة التي قصدها فاليري. إن بناء الصورة يصبح غاية بذاته، وخالق العمل يباشر في شن هجوم شامل على الجمهور، فارضًا عليهم موقفه الخاص تجاه ما يحدث. لو يقارن المرء بين السينما وفنون مبنية على أساس الزمن، مثل الباليه أو الموسيقى، فإن السينما تبرز بوصفها الفن الذي يعطي الزمن شكلًا مرئيًا وحقيقيًا. ما أن يتم تسجيل الزمن على الفيلم حتى تكون الظاهرة موجودة هناك؛ محددة، ثابتة، وغير قابلة للتغيير، حتى عندما يكون الزمن ذاتيًا على نحو مكثف. الفنانون ينقسمون إلى فئتين: أولئك الذين يخلقون عالمهم الداخلي الخاص، وأولئك الذين يعيدون خلق الواقع. يقينًا، أنا أنتمي إلى الفئة الأولى، لكن ذلك لا يغير شيئًا. إن عالمي الداخلي قد يكون ذا فائدة وأهمية للبعض، وقد يسبب للبعض الآخر الفتور واللامبالاة أو حتى السخط. القصد هو أن العالم الداخلي الذي تخلقه الوسيلة السينمائية ينبغي قبوله أو إدراكه بوصفه الواقع، حيث أنه مؤسس على نحو موضوعي في مباشرية اللحظة المسجلة. المقطوعة الموسيقية يمكن عزفها بطرق مختلفة، ويمكن أن تدوم لفترات زمنية متفاوتة. هنا، في الموسيقى، الزمن هو ببساطة حالة من الأسباب والنتائج المعلنة في نظام معين. إن لها صفة فلسفية، تجريدية. السينما، من جهة أخرى، قادرة على تسجيل الزمن في علامات ظاهرية ومنظورة، يمكن أن تميزها المشاعر. هكذا يصبح الزمن الأساس الفعلي للسينما: كما الصوت في الموسيقى، واللون في الرسم، والشخصية في الدراما. الإيقاع، إذن، ليس هو التعاقب القياسي، الموزون، للأجزاء. إن حركة الزمن ضمن الكادرات هي التي تخلق الإيقاع. وأنا مقتنع بأن الإيقاع وليس المونتاج، كما يعتقد البعض، هو العنصر المكون الرئيسي للسينما. المونتاج يوجد في كل شكل فني، بما أن المادة ينبغي أن تكون دائمًا منتقاة ومتصلة ببعضها. ما هو مختلف بشأن المونتاج السينمائي هو أنه يقدم الزمن على نحو متصل، مطبوعًا في أجزاء الفيلم. المونتاج يستلزم جمع وتركيب أجزاء صغيرة وأخرى كبيرة، كل منها تنطوي على زمن مختلف، وهذا التجميع والتركيب يخلق إدراكًا جديدا لوجود ذلك الزمن، المنبثق كنتيجة للفواصل، لما هو محذوف، للمنحوت في المعالجة. لكن الصفة المميزة للتجميع والتركيب، كما قلنا سابقًا، هي حاضرة قبل الآن في الأجزاء. المونتاج لا يولّد، لا يعيد خلق نوعية جديدة، إنه يظهر خاصية سبق وأن كانت متضمنة في الكادرات التي يربطها ويوحدها. المونتاج متوقع أثناء التصوير. إنه مفترض سلفًا في سمة ما هو مصور، و مبرمج من البداية. المونتاج له علاقة بامتدادات الزمن، ودرجة الكثافة التي بها توجد، كما تسجلها الكاميرا، وليس برموز تجريدية أو تكوينات منظمة بعناية، وليس بمفهومين متشابهين واللذين من اتحادهما ينتج – كما يقال لنا – "معنى ثالث".